Troubled Souls
by cupcakefrenzy123
Summary: [Arya/Loki with some Arya/Gendry]The winter has been raging for years now, no hopeful glint of an upcoming summer in sight-long enough for extreme measures to show appeal. Such as making a sacrifice of an imprisoned assassin to a possible malicious foreign deity...[M for violence, language, and possible sexual themes]


**[1]**

**Let This Be the Day…**

* * *

Joffrey Baratheon lounged on his throne, feigning confidence when all he felt was a gnarling pit in his stomach. Even with restricting rations to the populace, the winter was starting to take a toll on his daily meals. It had been ten years since the first snows began to fall in the south and this nightmare began.

The only blessing had been that the destruction and devastation weather had brought with it had made political intrigue cease. Everyone became more concerned about supporting family and living from one day to the next that who sat on the Iron Throne seemed of less importance than it had during the long summer.

One king was as useless as another when weeks of night and endless cold assaulted their doors.

Nature was a far crueler enemy then anything a mere man could construct.

It had to end.

He wanted to return to days of sunlight and warmth, where tournaments and executions could be held without a threat of blood congealing and freezing on the blade of a sword. And he was willing to try some extreme measures to ensure such.

In Westeros, religious beliefs were more of trends than actual devout. Nonsense that a man of Joffrey's intellect didn't concern himself with. Like matters of state, the faith of his people was something he had others to worry about and dictate over. He had never cared about the gods until recently.

Two days ago to be exact.

When the man from Ibben, a northern island on the other side of the Narrow Sea, arrived at King's Landing—claiming to have a solution to the frigid problem.

Now he stood before the king, wearing strange robes that merged armor with cloth, with his explanation hanging in the air between the royal and the foreigner.

"So, what you're proposing is that we make a sacrifice to this…Traveler of Light?" Swinging his legs off the throne's arm, Joffrey straightened to stare down the holy man. "By doing so, he will bring the end of this endless winter and a long summer shall return?"

"Yes." The man, nameless, kept his eyes downcast as he addressed the king. "Though, not just any sacrifice. Only the greatest of warriors will be seen as acceptable, and it can only be done during the paramount moment of the upcoming eclipse. When the offering is taken, and the sun is no longer shielded from sight, warmth shall begin to thaw this frozen land."

The offer did hold merit, in regards that it was something. All the other faiths had only given him the explanation that this was the course of the world they lived in. Something Joffrey found unacceptable. If this plan worked, he was going to make this Traveler of Light the main deity of the Seven Kingdoms. "When does this eclipse occur…and how will know when it will arrive?" Looking towards the paneled and barred windows, the king shook his head. "It may be 'day' outside, but I haven't seen the sun through the clouds' cover for nearly three months now."

"Believe me, your grace, it isn't something that you could easily miss. If you agree to take this course of action, your first concern should be on determining who will be the proper offering."

A smile spread across his face, a sight that made most of his court cringe and begin to grovel even if they had done nothing wrong. "I already have one in mind."

* * *

_Arms holding onto her, pressing her to a bar chest that smelled of iron and smoldering coal. Lips, dry and cracked from the lack of moisture in the forge's air, brushed across hers before traveling down her neck._

_Home._

_That was what this felt like..._

_That was that this was..._

_Not the castle in the north, not the gaggle of siblings and servants she had been raised about. _

_This was what she thought of when she yearned for home._

_Him..._

Footsteps brought her out of her dreams. Tears drying on her face from where they had rolled out during her snippet of slumber. Where hours of endless torture kept her eyes dry, a fraction of a dream had enough to render her into of fit of sobs.

Trying to focus on something else, Arya turned her attention onto physical discomfort

Such as the fact that she was certain that her arms had long stopped being joined to her shoulders. She had been hanging from the dungeon wall, arms shackled to the stones above her head with the tips of her toes barely making it to the floor, for what seemed like an eternity.

Not that she was able to feel any individual bits of pain anymore.

During her imprisonment, she highly doubted that there was a bone in her body that Joffrey hadn't ordered to be broken. Her hands being the first, after several attempts at picking the locks open during her first few days of captivity.

It might be a small blessing that her legs were no longer supporting her weight. They probably would have snapped under the pressure, seeing that her knee caps had yet to mend from their third breaking. Joffrey hadn't allowed his guards to rape Arya, but took great pleasure in watching them torture and mutilate her.

While they received no sexual pleasure from the acts, she was certain that watching such moment gave the blonde in-breed that same sexual satisfaction as he would watching two of Littlefinger's whores in bed together.

Had witnessed evidence of such after bouts when she couldn't suppress her screams any longer, when her teeth bit through the flesh of her lower lip.

And now there was an expression very close to the euphoric on his face as he stepped off the stairs and towards where she hung. Though she only received glimpses of him through her weary and swollen eyelids.

Maybe today would be the day that he would permanently blind her.

Would that make the situation better or worse?

Her groggy, hunger driven, mind couldn't pierce much together anymore. Hallucinations had started sometime before and Arya was beginning to question what was actually happening to what her brain decided to conjure.

"Doubt I will ever get over the sight of the 'great' Arya Stark bound and at my mercy." Shaking his head, Joffrey reached to touch her jaw to lift her head, making sure to grind his fingertips into the myriad of bruises. "I think I am going to miss moments like this most of all when you're gone."

Even if her jaw wasn't at risk of being broken and she had the capability of speech, Arya wouldn't have taken the bait as to where she was going…or if his was his way of telling her that he was finally going to sign her execution orders.

Joffrey hadn't expected any less from her. Long having acknowledged Arya's vow of silence. "You're going to aid me in bringing back summer."

Joy. Another delusion.

Letting her head fall back down, grimy locks of greasy hair shielded her face from view once more.

"_This_ is what you're going to offer the Traveler of Light?" The voice didn't belong to anyone Arya knew. The accent spoke of the lands across the sea. She had heard variants of the syllable pronunciations in her time in the free, eastern lands. "I told you that he would demand a great warrior, and you bring me this mangled girl?"

"This mangled girl was the number one assassin before it took a small army to bring her here." Her eyes flicked up long enough to get the satisfaction of seeing Joffrey's face twitched at the memory of the lengths he had to undergo to bring her in to custody.

Imagined or not, she would never get tired of that lone pleasure that hadn't been robbed from her.

"She looks like she can't stand, let alone fight."

"You didn't the person had to be battle ready."

"True…"

"Then I don't see where the problem resides. If he wants to make sport of her being defiling whatever appeal of the flesh she might offer, can't he use his powers to mend what is broken?"

"I—"

"If this god of traveling light—"

"Traveler of Light."

"—has the power to melt all this forsaken snow, shouldn't he have enough power to heal?" Joffrey's voice had an edge. Whatever this illusion was trying to do, it had gotten his condescending tone of entitlement just right.

"Yes." The foreigner's tone had notes of uncertainty. "He does have such abilities to heal and mend. It just doesn't seem befitting to send him a less than pristine offering."

"She's still a virgin."

Stepping in closer, the unknown man lifted Arya's head to give her a better look. Her eyelids flipped back, gaining her a sight of hair a paler shade of blonde than Joffrey's complete with a full beard that, despite his youthful appearance, was nearly white. "That does hold merit. And you're sure that she's a capable warrior?"

"Ask any of my gold cloaks."

"Then we have to work fast. Clean her up and prepare her for tomorrow. The eclipse is set for midafternoon and we can't be off by the slightest of seconds. There's no second chances and only the slightest of openings."

Wait…

What…

Even her addled wits knew that something was wrong. Normally, in her delusions and living nightmare, the torment would be going on now. Sometimes, on rare occasions, there would be the random dragon and sometimes a diewolf made an appearance and talked to her in Bran's voice…but never anything about this.

Traveler of Light?

Sacrifice of a warrior?

Eclipse?

Either her brain had completely broken or Joffrey had fallen off the mental deep-end.

Neither option, madness nor death to a deity that she highly doubted existed, had a pleasant end for her.

The answer came with the release of her shackles, crumbling her to the ground and flaring all the pain that had gradually numbed back to crisp clarity…There was no way that she managed to withhold her scream, nor any way that she could say that this occurrence was all in her head.

Being swallowed by the blackness of oblivion was a blessing; one that was long enough for her to lose a significant amount of time, having waken clean and dressed in some kind of long robe that covered her from neck to toe. And yet not even close to long enough. Seeing that, on waking, she discovered that she was standing in the middle of a clearing in a forest and was only managing to do so because she was tied to a post.

A post.

Like a scarecrow in a middle of a storm that bordered on the insane. Snow spiraled through the air and pilled about her feet, yet lighting was flashing across the sky and clouds were about to funnel.

What in the name of the seven hells?

She had to be dreaming…right?

That or she had finally died and this was her eternal damnation.

That she could probably live with. She might even go as far as find the notion an appealing conclusion to what had become of her life. That was if it wasn't for the fact that the sky seemed to be on fire…and the men—who seemed to be placed to make sure that she didn't escape, speaking scores of how highly some thought of her skills if they thought she would make a break for freedom in her current condition—had begun to ran at the sight of what was transpiring above them.

She would be scared, should be terrified.

But she was just too tired to care.

If this wasn't the afterlife, the chaos raging about her would surely take her there.

She had always been told that the answer in regards to Death, the only god she acknowledged the existence was, was 'not today.'

At the moment, as she looked upon what could possibly be the end of the world, she found her mind screaming with the one lone plea…

Please.

Please.

She was tired of being strong.

Please.

Let today be the day she was finally granted rest.

Let today be the day she died.


End file.
